After a summer of cruising you will have a good idea of what you know and what you don’t know. Now is the time to begin doing something about it. Just complying with legal requirments is clearly not enough. Boat accidents and deaths took a dramatic increase during covid. For real enjoyable boating the skipper will be contining their education and skills development. There are multiple ways to learn but you have to be intentional and engage.

1. Watch youtube videos. In my last post I listed a number of my favioutes. All of these are run by very skilled and experienced people and you can learn lots of good thing from them. Caution: There are loads of people who publish regularly on Youtube or facebook who really don’t know what they are doing. Be careful if you are researching how to do something; there are a lot of potental Darwin Award winners who frequent social media!
2. Your Local Community. We all have friend who know things and are willing to share their experience. This is always a good thing to be doing and you will soon become aware of those who have good knowledge.
3. Courses I am involved in the Canadian Power and Sail Squadron of Canada. CPS offers many courses on Navigation, Radio Operation, Weather, Boat maintenance and many other topics. Check out their website and look for a course that interests you. Many of our courses today can be done online. https://cps-ecp.org
4. Books Some people still do read books and of course these are an extreemly valueable resource that is reliable. A few books that I have often refered to are “Good Old Boat”, “Chapmans Piloting”, ” Ashley Book of Knots”,
5. There are many other excelent books that I will give a fuller treatment in a later posts but if you have some favourites please comment below.